Seconds after coming off the bench, Kyle Korver received a pass on the right wing behind the 3-point and launched. Miss.
On the next possession, he came off a Rudy Gobert screen on the left wing and again launched as soon as he caught the ball. This time, his 3-pointer connected off the back iron for his first points of the game.
Korver played his first home game for the Utah Jazz after coming over in a trade that sent Alec Burks and two future second-round picks to the Cleveland Cavaliers. He finished the game with 15 points on 5-of-8 shooting, including 3 of 4 from the 3-point line. He logged 15 minutes off the bench in the 139-105 victory over the San Antonio Spurs.
“It was a great first night back,” Korver said. “Just walking in here and seeing a lot of familiar faces — I had a lot of great memories from here.”
Korver spent two and a half seasons with the Jazz earlier in his career, from 2007-2010, after he was acquired in a trade with the Philadelphia 76ers. In his last season with Utah, he shot 53.6 percent from the 3-point line — the best mark of his career.
“These were two and a half really good years for me, on a lot of levels — basketball, personally,” Korver said at Tuesday’s morning shootaround. “I really enjoyed my time in Salt Lake City. I was excited to come back.”
After the game, Korver’s teammates dumped water on his head during his walk-off interview. It was his third game since joining the team and his highest-scoring with the Jazz.
“Maybe he got [the Jazz] all excited by making those threes because that’s what Kyle does,” Spurs head coach Gregg Popovich said. “It got pretty infectious.”
The Jazz made 20 3-pointers against the Spurs. Korver was tied with Joe Ingles for making the second-most on the team. Donovan Mitchell made four.
Korver struggled in this second game with Utah — a 102-100 loss to the Miami Heat. But against the Spurs, it appeared he was finding his bearings.
“I definitely felt more comfortable tonight than I did last game,” Korver said. “I’ll just keep building on that.”
Korver acknowledges that joining a new team in the throes of an NBA season merits an adjustment. He said while he was coached by Quin Snyder when they were both with the Atlanta Hawks — Snyder was an assistant there in the 2013-14 season — he has yet to learn all the terminology the Jazz use.
“I kind of know what we want to get to,” Korver said. “I just don’t know what it’s called all the time. We’re talking sign language out there with our plays a lot times, and I have to learn that.”
Snyder said before the game that Korver’s integration has gone well so far and that the 16-year veteran will lean on his experience to get up to speed as quickly as possible.
“Every program, every system is a little different,” Snyder said. “But there’s concepts and if you focus on those concepts, I think you get a familiarity and a comfort level that happens quickly, you hope.”
But even after only three games, Korver feels the marriage between him and Snyder — and by extension, the Jazz — can last a while.
“This is how I operate,” Korver said. “I like this type of stuff. I like thinking like this. I like thinking differently than maybe what everybody else is doing. It feels like a good fit.”
